Ashley Walser

10/22/16

EDAD 543
Assignment #4

Inquiry Cycle: What Kind of Evidence are you Collecting?

AWSP Focus Standards:
Criterion 1 Creating a Culture
1.2 Engages in essential conversations for ongoing improvement
1.3 Facilitates collaborative processes leading toward continuous improvement
Criterion 2 Ensuring School Safety
2.2 Provides for social, emotional and intellectual safety
Criterion 3 Planning with Data
3.4 Assists staff to use data to guide, modify and improve classroom teaching
and student learning

A leadership role that I play at school is facilitator for our child study process.
The child study team is a leadership team made up of intervention specialists,
grade level representatives, a school counselor, school psychologist and principal.
The team works collaboratively with parents and staff to support students
experiencing learning and behavioral difficulties by suggesting intervention and
making other recommendations based on a range of long term data and other
relevant factors regarding the whole child. We hold two meetings a week with
teachers. Teachers who have a social/emotional or academic concern for a specific
student initiate meetings through me. As facilitator of the child study process I
assist teachers in preparing for meetings and collecting data for the team. For the

Ashley Walser
10/22/16

EDAD 543
Assignment #4

purpose of this assignment I will be detailing the role of data in the child study
process.
I have interviewed a variety of teachers who have interacted in the child
study process to get their viewpoint on the role data takes and its importance in this
process. The first question I asked them was, How do you know that you need to
bring a student up for a social-emotional or academic child study? What kind of
outcome are you hoping to get from the meeting? A second year teacher
explained that she usually brings a student up for child study after she has tried a
few interventions and has not seen progress based on collecting data on the skill
addressed in her intervention. She has used qualitative measures, like writing
samples, and quantitative measures like Correct Writing Sequence Scores (CWS).
For example, when she was concerned about a students ability to write at grade
level she used a quantitative three minute writing assessment to get a CWS score to
collect baseline data and formatively assess the effectiveness of an intervention she
tried out on her student.

When her intervention did not show progress based on

the quantitative CWS score she had been collecting she went to the child study
team to get ideas from a larger group. When she brought up this student to child
study she was convinced that the child would qualify for special education services
and wanted to confirm that theory with the data that she had collected. The child
study team at our school dually serves as the MDT team, which recommends if a
child should be assessed for special education services.
When a veteran teacher was asked the same question about social/emotional
needs she focused in on qualitative data. She knows that she needs to bring
someone up if she is concerned by the extremity of a behavior or if she is not
making progress in building a relationship to diminish behaviors in class. When she
comes to child study she brings descriptions of the observable behavior and work
samples that show the impact of the behavior in comparison to peers work.

Ashley Walser
10/22/16

EDAD 543
Assignment #4

The child study team has pre-created data forms for teachers to use when
they initiate a meeting. There is a form for ELA concerns that recommends teachers
collecting a variety of quantitative measures like SBAC scores and benchmark
reading assessment scores. It then recommends attaching specific qualitative
measures, like work samples or conferring notes, to get a fuller picture of the whole
student. The math form follows a similar data collection structure as the ELA form
asking for a variety of quantitative and qualitative measures. The Social/Emotional
Learning form has encountered the most changes over the past few years based on
shifts in behavioral supports in our school. The staff at our school has been
participating in trainings around social thinking strategies, ABA behavioral
strategies and the work of Dr. Ross Greene. Our current social emotional learning
child study form is focused on describing a behavior and identifying how it is
impacting the students learning, which is mainly qualitative. Quantitative data can
be collected for social emotional meetings once a target behavior has been
identified.
The second year teacher detailed how she collects data on social emotional
learning for her students. As a quantitative measure she would bring an ABC chart
and behavior plans that she has tried in the classroom setting. Her behavior plan
would be quantitative because it would show the number of times the student is
showing expected versus unexpected behavior throughout the day. The ABC chart
would be qualitative due to teacher descriptions of the behavior, but also
quantitative because it would show the number of times specific behaviors are

Ashley Walser
10/22/16

EDAD 543
Assignment #4

occurring. This teacher tries to collect data in the moment, but also gets assistance
from TOSAs to take observational data during whole group lessons.
For the child study team, social emotional meetings are the greyest in the
sense that there are so many heightened emotions around student social emotional
needs. There is also no consistent tool used across the building/district to collect
social emotional data. The veteran teacher detailed how using quantitative data for
an initial meeting is difficult for social emotional meetings. She usually speaks with
a child study team member before a meeting to talk through her quantitative
observations. Then she determines if a meeting will be necessary. Other measures
she takes include collecting a pre-FBA assessment to determine a possible function
for the behavior, making notes about interventions, documenting concerning
behaviors and discussing the student with parents.
At the end of an initial child study meeting we collect a series of action items
to address specific concerns. These action items always include at least one
intervention to be used in the classroom. Data from this intervention is used to
make decisions about next steps. A possible next step could be a follow-up meeting
to recommend special education testing or a 504 for accommodations, meeting with
parents and/or continuing a tier 2 support intervention in the classroom. The
veteran teacher was honest in her response that the action items from meetings for
students with social emotional needs are not always the most helpful. She leaves
the meeting feeling reinforced that there is an issue. She finds action items that
place students in an intervention group, like counseling or social thinking
interventions are the most helpful. Still these interventions take time. She knows
that she needs to come back to the child study process if she is not seeing progress
based on qualitative observational measures. The second year teacher stated that
she feels like she has a specific intervention to try when she leaves a meeting and
knows what she needs to take more data on. If the student is not making adequate
progress with that intervention she would schedule a follow-up meeting, using her
data collection from the intervention as evidence. The analysis of qualitative and
quantitative data drives the decision making process of child study.